Saturday, January 19, 2013

2013 U.S. Nationals predictions start here... with PAIRS!

It turns out you have to go back 20 years to find a
Nationals with 10 or fewer entrants in Senior Pairs. 1993 Nats gave Calla
Urbanski/Rocky Marval the gold, Jenni Meno/Todd Sand the silver, and Karen
Courtland/Todd Reynolds the bronze... and then only 6 more teams behind them in
the entire thing (including fifth-placers Kyoko Ina and Jason Dungjen, the
latter of which you might know better now as coach to Jeremy Abbott and Alissa
Czisny).

This year brings us only ten teams, so we might as well list
them all... why not... there’s plenty of room! I’ll even include a YouTube clip
if I can find one.

From Midwesterns come Kiri
Baga /Taylor Toth; a new team and a first-time (?) pair team for Baga, who
continues to compete in singles as well. Their Indy Challenge video is here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTjQD-3pKUk

Also from Mids is DeeDee
Leng /Timothy LeDuc. LeDuc was 11th last year with former
partner Cassie Andrews. I can’t find any video of these two skating
together, but if you happen to know more about them or their story, please share!

One more from Mids: Alexa
Scimeca /Christopher Knierim. It may be a new pairing (both skated at Nats
last year with other partners), but it appears to have started well—they won
Coup de Nice and finished a respectable 4th at NHK Trophy, as can be seen here.

As for the rest of the competitors (all of whom have
received a “Bye”):

Marissa Castelli /Simon
Shnapir are perhaps the “veteran” team at this point, training as a team
since 2006 and competing at the senior level since 2009. They won their first
GP medal, a bronze, at NHK Trophy a couple months ago (seen here).

Lindsay Davis /Mark
Ladwig, on the other hand, are perhaps the newest team... but they’ve
already got three major events under their collective belts with the Ice Challenge
(5th place), Skate Canada (7th), and NHK (6th).
Here’s a performance from SkCAN.

Haven Denney/Brandon
Frazier were competing at the Junior level as recently as this past fall
(see this performance at JGP Lake Placid, where they finished 4th),
so Seniors is a new game for them.

Gretchen Donlan
/Andrew Speroff are in their third year as seniors and received their first
GP assignment this season with Skate America (seen here).

Tiffany Vise/Don
Baldwin are only in their third season together, but at ages 35 (Baldwin)
and nearly 27 (Vise) they’ve achieved their own sort of seniority. Vise, in
fact, has competed at the senior level (with three different pairs partners)
since 2002! You can find a performance from this season’s Skate America here.

2 comments:

Do the men next! As much as I love Jeremy Abbot and co., I feel like there is a bit of a power vacuum in men's skating for the US. I'm waiting for the next Evan Lysacek, do you think he'll be at nat'ls this yr?

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By day, I write and/or do production for clients in corporate video and B2B magazines. But I've also written for PSA (Professional Skaters Association) Magazine and SKATING (official USFS publication)... with more to come!